ShareGAZA: Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter on Thursday in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Zionist forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced “security zone” they intend to seize. A day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded enclave, Zionist forces pushed into the city on Gaza’s southern edge which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.
Gaza’s health ministry reported at least 97 people killed in Zionist strikes in the past 24 hours, including at least 20 killed in an airstrike around dawn in Shujaiya, a suburb of Gaza City in the north.
Later on Thursday, a Zionist airstrike killed at least 27 Palestinians, including women and children, inside a school building that served as a shelter for displaced families in Gaza City, local health authorities said.
Medics said three missiles slammed into the Dar Al-Arqam school building in Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City. Rafah “is gone, it is being wiped out,” a father of seven among the hundreds of thousands who had fled from Rafah to neighboring Khan Yunis, told Reuters. “They are knocking down what is left standing of houses and property,” said the man who declined to be identified for fear of repercussions.
The assault to capture Rafah is a major escalation in the war, which the Zionist entity restarted last month after effectively abandoning a ceasefire in place since January. In Shujaiya in the north, one of the districts where the Zionist entity has ordered the population to leave, hundreds of residents streamed out on Thursday, some carrying their belongings as they walked, others on donkey carts and bikes or in vans.
“I want to die. Let them kill us and free us from this life. We’re not living, we’re dead,” said Umm Aaed Bardaa. In Khan Younis, where several people were killed by a strike, Adel Abu Fakher was checking the damage to his tent: “There’s nothing left for us. We’re being killed while asleep,” he said.
The Zionist entity has not spelled out its long-term aims for the security zone its troops are now seizing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said troops were taking an area he called the “Morag Axis”, a reference to an abandoned former Zionist settlement between Rafah and Khan Younis. Gazans who had returned to homes in the ruins during the ceasefire have now been ordered to flee communities on the northern and southern edges of the strip.
They fear the Zionist entity’s intention is to depopulate those areas indefinitely, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people permanently homeless while the Zionist entity seizes some of Gaza’s last agricultural land and critical water infrastructure. Since the first phase of the ceasefire expired at the start of March with no agreement to prolong it, Israel has imposed a total blockade on all goods for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, recreating what international organizations call a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Zionist entity’s military said on Thursday it was conducting an investigation into the deaths of 15 Palestinian aid workers found buried in a shallow grave in March near Red Crescent vehicles, an incident that caused global alarm. The military said troops fired on the cars believing they carried fighters. The Zionist campaign has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Rafah residents said most of the local population had followed the Zionist entity’s order to leave, as Zionist strikes toppled buildings there. But a strike on the main road between Khan Younis and Rafah stopped most movement between the two cities. Movement of people and traffic along the western coastal road near “Morag” was also limited by bombardment. “Others stayed because they don’t know where to go, or got fed up of being displaced several times. We are afraid they might be killed or at best detained,” said Basem, a resident of Rafah who declined to give a second name. – Reuters
